Suzanne Bridge, MD, Internal Medicine Program, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON.
John Granton, MD, FRCPC, Associate Professor of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto; Director, Pulmonary Hypertension Program, Toronto General Hospital, Toronto, ON.
Pulmonary arterial hypertension is a rare but incurable disease characterized by a progressive increase in pulmonary vascular resistance and ultimately dysfunction of the right ventricle. Clinically, the reduction in right ventricular output and ensuing right ventricular failure causes severe physical limitation, reduced quality of life, and increased mortality. With the present use of directed therapies such as prostanoids, prognosis is slowly improving. Currently, unique challenges in both clinical assessment and management arise as the population of patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension ages and we better recognize the spectrum of this disease in older adults.
Key words: Pulmonary arterial hypertension, echocardiogram, dyspnea, bone morphogenic protein receptor type-2, prostanoids, endothelin.
